The children’s activity planning site ActivityHero has acquired Zoetic, which offers an app that lets users discover and share new places, activities, and events.

Up to this point ActivityHero has acted as a marketplace where activity sellers (like children’s camps) could connect with parents looking for things for the kids to do — a sort of OpenTable for kids’ activities. The Zoetic people, technology, and intellectual property will bring a new focus on mobile and activity discovery.

ActivityHero CEO Shilpa Dalmia told VentureBeat that with the addition of Zoetic’s two employees — cofounders Rajiv Makhijani and William Li — her company now has filled the key roles needed to move forward. Makhijani and Li will lead ActivityHero’s engineering team.

“This acquisition is crucial to helping achieve our goal of becoming the No. 1 destination for activity planning in the U.S.,” Dalmia said.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Children’s camps and afterschool activities is a $30 billion market, with U.S. families spending more than $1500 a year per child on enrichment activities.

ActivityHero was started by two Silicon Valley “momtrepreneurs,” Dalmia and Peggy Chang, who were frustrated by the lack of resources to search, plan, and book activities for their children.

]]>0ActivityHero acquires Zoetic to expand its activity planning serviceCan Pebble take on Goliath-sized smartwatch platforms?http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/24/can-pebble-take-on-goliath-sized-smartwatch-platforms/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/24/can-pebble-take-on-goliath-sized-smartwatch-platforms/#commentsSun, 24 Aug 2014 16:00:02 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1534129Volume Up is a regular column on consumer technology and digital ecosystems by Reticle Research principal analyst Ross Rubin. This week we saw mighty Microsoft settling for Windows Phone landing on an HTC One, a device that has had Android for five months, and Barnes & Noble lay the final dirt on its tablet hardware ambitions […]
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Volume Up is a regular column on consumer technology and digital ecosystems by Reticle Research principal analyst Ross Rubin.

This week we saw mighty Microsoft settling for Windows Phone landing on an HTC One, a device that has had Android for five months, and Barnes & Noble lay the final dirt on its tablet hardware ambitions with the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, which is a mere app and a few widgets away from Samsung’s normal tablets.

Both moves underscore how difficult it is to build platforms even with investing the kind of money that would make Pebble’s record-breaking Kickstarter campaign look like pocket change. The company announced this week that it’s hiring designers behind webOS to help develop its platform as we stand weeks away from the release of the Moto 360 and the widely expected introduction of an Apple watch.

David may have used a stone to defeat Goliath, but can a Pebble also be effective against giants?

The Pebble smartwatch is simple, utilitarian, relatively cheap and humble. It made no grand pronouncements about how it was going to usher in the next wave of computing when it launched last year. But, according to the company, it has always had the mission of being a wearable platform company.

Indeed, Pebble already offers a range of ways to create apps and watchfaces using languages such as JavaScript, Python and C; there’s even a cloud-based development environment. The company may be the only one that has successfully executed finagling an app store within an app on iOS. Pebble apps may not dazzle you with their functionality or appearance, but the hardware is modest and these are early days.

The company recognizes the vast resources that Apple and Google can bring to bear and the close ways it can integrate into their operating systems and other products. And then there’s the question of the webOS legacy. The star-crossed operating system was always praised for its user interface, but was crushed in the market by the same duo that now stands to compete with Pebble. Pebble spins this as an advantage, saying that the new hires have come away with a lot of knowledge to accompany their battle scars.

But there are at least three things in Pebble’s favor. First, unlike with PCs, tablets and phones, many people have more than one watch, a product category that will remain as much about fashion as function. Second, as Dropbox has proven, there’s a place for third parties that play well in multiple operating systems. Pebble points out that, using its tools, it’s possible to pair a Pebble with a Mac or Windows Phone, even though there are no official apps for that.

Pebble has been a pioneer that has held up its proposition pretty well in the face of the first round of watches from Samsung and Google’s other partners. Its ability to survive in the wake of competition with giant ecosystems will depend on whether it can survive any sea changes that Apple may usher in.

Adding further to the webOS legacy intrigue is that that operating system was originally developed to save Palm, a company whose first products had much in common philosophically with the Pebble. But a key difference is that Palm was slow to react to the changes that a revolutionary product brought. Pebble, on the other hand, is at least trying to prepare itself for the coming onslaught.

More information:

More information:

]]>0Can Pebble take on Goliath-sized smartwatch platforms?If I get millions of dollars, then text me: IFTTT gets $7M from Andreessen-Horowitzhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/12/20/ifttt-funding/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/20/ifttt-funding/#commentsThu, 20 Dec 2012 23:28:49 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=594172IFTTT, a service that lets you program various commands such as, "If the weather gets cold, then send me a text," gets a first round of funding from well-known VC firm Andreessen-Horowitz.
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Andreessen-Horowitz just invested a $7 million first round of funding in IFTTT today, a company that lets you command the Internet like an organizational wizard.

IFTTT stands for “if this then that,” and lets anyone set up a set of various commands that helps them organize their lives online. Seed investor Mike Maples explained it to VentureBeat like this:

“With IFFT, you can create these recipes. If the weather drops, program it to send me a text message in the morning to bundle up. If I receive an attachment in gmail, put it in my dropbox. If i take a photo on Instagram, put it in my dropbox. If I tweet, put it on Facebook.”

The company said in a statement that it will use the funding to create new ways for people to use IFTTT on mobile devices, “simplify the design,” and build a platform upon which people can build more “channels.” For example, Facebook could build tools on top of IFTTT for its users.

Andreessen-Horowitz investor John O’Farrell explained IFTTT in a blog post as “digital duct tape,” being able to connect and weave all your apps together. O’Farrell joins the board of IFTTT with this investment and says while the team is a small one — seven people — the technology is important as the things in our home become “connected.” He envisions a day when his refrigerator texts him every time he needs milk and says IFTTT will be there to facilitate that connection when fridges become smart.

IFTTT was launched in 2010, and is based in San Francisco, Calif. Other investors participating in the round include NEA and Lerer Ventures.

]]>0If I get millions of dollars, then text me: IFTTT gets $7M from Andreessen-HorowitzAn ugly duckling no more: Why Platform-as-a-Service is poised for huge growthhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/10/08/paas-platform-as-a-service-explained/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/08/paas-platform-as-a-service-explained/#commentsMon, 08 Oct 2012 19:19:05 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=535287Platform-as-a-Service is part of the booming cloud computing sector, one area of the cloud that some analysts and developers have overlooked. But recent research shows that PaaS is no longer the ugly duckling of the cloud industry -- and that it's ready to grow quite a bit during the next few years.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd!

Platform-as-a-Service is part of the booming cloud computing sector, one area of the cloud that some analysts, companies, and developers have overlooked. But recent research shows that PaaS is no longer the ugly duckling of the cloud industry — and that it’s ready to grow quite a bit during the next few years.

PaaS will make up barely 1 percent of the overall $109 billion cloud industry this year. But it will likely grow more than 30 percent annually over the next four years, according to research firm Gartner.

This could make PaaS a $2.9 billion market by 2016, or more than 2 percent of the $209 billion total cloud market. While small, it’s the second fastest growing “layer” of the cloud and one that cloud-watchers should be paying closer attention to.

What is PaaS?

Like many things dubbed cloud, PaaS is a term that sometimes get lost in technobabble or marketing jargon. So let’s break down what PaaS actually is.

The cloud features four main layers, according to Gartner: Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service, and Business Process-as-a-Service (IaaS, Paas, SaaS, and BPaaS,).

IaaS companies such as Amazon, Rackspace, SoftLayer, and Joyent offer the core infrastructure and virtual servers that host applications and data. This is where the heavy iron sits, such as storage, servers, and so on. The SaaS category, meanwhile, lies on the opposite end: It includes applications that companies deliver exclusively via the web (rather than desktop apps). These include apps such as Google Docs, Salesforce CRM, Workday, Box, Taleo, and NetSuite that enterprise workers rely on. BPaaS includes business process services like advertising or payments.

PaaS sits in-between IaaS and SaaS, providing an environment for developers and companies to host and deploy applications more easily. Simply put, PaaS companies shield developers from the hassle of setting up, configuring, and managing things like servers and databases, so that they don’t have to see the infrastructure side.

What makes PaaS so attractive is that it can improve the speed of developing an app, save you money, and maybe most important, let you focus on innovating your application and business. Major PaaS providers include Salesforce (Heroku), Google (App Engine), and Microsoft (Azure).

In the diagram below, you can see how PaaS fits into the main layers of the cloud:

Boom time

CloudBeat 2012 will assemble the biggest names in the cloud’s evolving story to uncover real cases of revolutionary adoption. Unlike other cloud events, the customers themselves will be front and center. Their discussions with vendors and other experts will give you rare insights into what really works, who’s buying what, and where the industry is going. CloudBeat happens November 28-29 in Redwood City, Calif. Register today!

In terms of size, SaaS, IaaS, and BPaaS far outstrip PaaS. In 2012, PaaS revenues ($1.2 billion) will be a tenth of the size of SaaS ($14.4 billion), a fifth of IaaS ($6.2 billion), and just a tiny fraction of BPaaS ($84.1 billion).

However, when it comes to year-over-year growth of the PaaS segment itself, it looks quite nice.

Research firm IDC breaks down the market slightly differently than Gartner and is more bullish on PaaS. It estimates that the worldwide public PaaS market will grow from $2.6 billion in 2011 to $9.8 billion in 2016. That represents 30.9 percent annualized growth.

By 2016, IDC believes public PaaS will account for 8.5 percent of overall app dev and deployment revenue, with “strong growth” occurring in every region of the world. Stephen Hendrick, IDC group vice president for application development and deployment research, calls PaaS’ future “exciting.”

Just this week, Salesforce COO George Hu said at DEMO Fall 2012 that its platform services have surpassed Salesforce’s CRM in terms of API calls per day. “The pace keeps me up at night,” he said. “Things are moving incredibly fast at Salesforce right now.”

Additionally, a recent survey by smaller PaaS provider Engine Yard, which had $28 million in revenue last year, indicates that PaaS adoption is on the rise with medium and large companies. Two out of three survey respondents said they already use or plan to use PaaS in the next two years. “Enterprise is beginning to bite,” Mark Gaydos, the Engine Yard SVP of marketing, told us at the time.

For more on how the market is growing, take a look at some of the biggest players:

Heroku

One of the largest players in the PaaS marketplace is Salesforce with Heroku, which has more than 2.3 million apps currently deployed on it. A year ago it had just 200,000. Heroku customers include Walmart, Macy’s, Activision Blizzard, and GroupMe.

“We see PaaS as a fundamental game changer,” Heroku chief operating officer Oren Teich told VentureBeat. “We’re looking at the base of innovation. We’ve only climbed 100 feet of a 3-mile-high mountain.”

Teich said he expects Heroku to host more than five million apps a year from now. He admits that he’s being cautious with that number and said it could potentially be more akin to six million or seven million apps if momentum really picks up. Salesforce would not reveal the revenue it generates from Heroku.

Google App Engine

Here, too, Google does not break down revenue it gets from App Engine. However, Google’s statistics show that usage of App Engine is growing quickly. At the Google I/O conference this past June, Google announced that it had more than 1 million active apps deployed on GAE and 250,000 active developers building on the platform. In May 2011, Google said it had 200,000 active apps and 100,000 active developers.

Half of the Internet’s IP addresses touch Google App Engine servers each week, a Google spokesperson recently told me. Some two trillion datastore operations are performed on it each month.

Microsoft Windows Azure

Steven Martin, the general manager of Azure’s operations team, told us that Azure has “tens of thousands” of customers and that Azure has doubled the number of its customers over the past 12 months. He said Microsoft has doubled compute capacity for Azure so it can meet demand and that Azure users are consuming more compute capacity than the world used in 1998.

“We’ve worked hard to keep up with demand the past two years,” Martin told us. “In the long term, PaaS will be most widely used for application development.”

AppFog has more than 60,000 apps hosted, up from 50,000 apps a month ago and 10,000 apps a year ago, according to AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson. AppFog also recently acquired Nodester, a PaaS that supports the popular Node.js programming environment.

Developers take control

The prospects for PaaS weren’t always so exciting. Redmonk analyst Steve O’Grady says that the earliest PaaS implementations — Salesforce’s Force.com, Google App Engine, Microsoft’s Azure — did not sell as well as the market expected.

“From an adoption standpoint, early PaaS largely failed,” O’Grady said. “Did Force.com and Google get users? Yes, but they did not live up to expectations.”

That said, a few barriers were stopping the mass market from buying in. First, many large enterprise companies don’t permit PaaS use. AppFog’s Carlson says that CIOs are often concerned about vendor lock-in and don’t like PaaS providers taking over functions the company could potentially set up on its own.

But developers go around their IT overlords and use PaaS services anyway. Because much of the technology is low-cost or open-source, developers say “screw it” because PaaS greatly improves their productivity and lowers project costs.

O’Grady says what the CIOs want doesn’t matter now that their developers have taken control. “They don’t have a choice,” he said.

The second barrier to Paas adoption? Not enough people know what PaaS can help their company accomplish. Heroku’s Teich said when he talks to developers and enterprises about PaaS, they don’t do much evaluation of their options or even know what the options are. Basically, they are woefully uneducated.

“Developers have a lot of preconceived notions about which PaaS they should use,” Teich said. “It’s another sign that PaaS is something that has a lot of growth potential.”

If you feel like you need a PaaS education, come join us for the CloudBeat 2012 conference on Nov. 28 and 29 in Redwood City, Calif. We look forward to seeing you there.

As far as user milestones go, 20,000 is usually nothing to boast about. But for App.net, a nascent for-charge social platform, the modest achievement means the company can reduce its prices.

App.net is a Twitter-like social network where consumers pay to post in an ad-free environment. It’s also a framework that allows developers to not only build applications as they see fit but also make some moolah in the process. The service launched in beta two months ago following a successful Kickstarter-style funding campaign.

“The membership of App.net is just about to cross the 20,000 user level, which creates some economies of scale for us,” founder and CEO Dalton Caldwell penned in a blog post. “Because of this momentum and scale, we’ve decided to introduce a couple of updates to our pricing model.”

From here on out, App.net members can opt to pay $5 per month or $36 a year. Previously, the startup offered one member-tier plan that cost $50 per year. Members who paid the $50 free are being gifted a few additional months of service.

Unfortunately for App.net developers, who pay $100 per year to build applications, the discounts aren’t open to them. Last week, however, the company rolled out a developer incentive program to begin rewarding the best app-markers with cash for their machinations.

There are currently 10 App.net iOS apps, three Android applications, one Windows Phone app, four Mac desktop clients, and several browser plugins, Caldwell said.

]]>0App.net drops prices as membership approaches 20,000LinkedIn makes a push for more content with new developer toolshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/08/07/linkedin-developer-platform/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/07/linkedin-developer-platform/#commentsTue, 07 Aug 2012 20:44:30 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=505072LinkedIn has released upgraded developer tools to stimulate application development and supply its service with enough content to keep members continually engaged on its web and mobile platforms.
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd!

Fresh off a stellar second quarter earnings report, the professional social network LinkedIn has today released new developer tools and resources in an effort to stimulate application development and supply its service with enough content to keep members continually engaged on its web and mobile platforms.

Above: LinkedIn sign-in experience

In the form of developer tools, LinkedIn has released a refreshed sign-in with LinkedIn experience, a reworked share API to give developers more exposure on LinkedIn, and a cleaner, simpler developer website. The company has also revised its developer terms of service.

Specifically, the sign-in experience, which appears to be modeled after the screens used by Twitter and Facebook, has been improved with a new design and enables developers to request email addresses from the people who want to log in with LinkedIn. The screen now shows users exactly what types of data the application in question may access. The upgrade should encourage more publishers and mobile app makers to add a log in with a LinkedIn option.

The spruced-up share API is equally important as it gives approved devlopers exposure inside LinkedIn. The API has been updated with an attribution element so that should a LinkedIn member opt to share a piece a content to the site, the publisher will receive credit in the form of a “via” link listed atop the post.

The message from LinkedIn today is this: Come build your media-rich applications on LinkedIn and integrate with us, and we’ll put your content in front of 175 million people. In return, LinkedIn gets content flowing into its network that should further engage its members who, especially on mobile, are consuming it even more rabidly with each passing month.

Head of API platform product and strategy Madhu Gupta summed up the intent of the changes: “We’re now making it even easier for our developer community to use LinkedIn as their main distribution platform for discussing and sharing professional content.”

You can read that statement as LinkedIn wanting to be the single place where business folks go to get, discuss, and share news. And really, this is all about content, as evidenced by developer tool launch partners WordPress, Flipboard, and Business Insider.

Content will be the thing that keeps LinkedIn relevant on mobile. CEO Jeff Weiner said as much to investors last week. Content is driving especially high engagement rates in LinkedIn’s iPad application, where the company is starting to experiment with advertisements, he said. “We are seeing encouraging signs of engagement as more than half the page views on the app are being generated by content-focused products such as updates, news and groups.”

LinkedIn also wants to be seen as having a platform as robust as any other. Twitter and Facebook, even amid a wave of recent criticism and growing tension with developers, sit very much atop the platform hierarchy. LinkedIn’s platform offerings seem at best tertiary when pitted against Twitter and Facebook, which have their sign-in buttons embedded everywhere.

]]>0LinkedIn makes a push for more content with new developer toolsZynga’s Mark Pincus says focus more on content, less on investing in platformshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/07/10/mark-pincus-mobilebeat/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/10/mark-pincus-mobilebeat/#commentsTue, 10 Jul 2012 18:06:47 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=487328Gaming execs: Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd! One of the major issues with the mobile ecosystem today is that developers are still separated from the app store, insists Zynga founder Mark Pincus. “We […]
]]>Gaming execs:Join 180 select leaders from King, Glu, Rovio, Unity, Facebook, and more to plan your path to global domination in 2015. GamesBeat Summit is invite-only -- apply here. Ticket prices increase on April 3rd!

One of the major issues with the mobile ecosystem today is that developers are still separated from the app store, insists Zynga founder Mark Pincus.

“We need to be more interconnected with each other as an industry,” Pincus said at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat-GamesBeat 2012 conference in San Francisco. “We need channels so that many more games can be discovered.”

Currently, the market breeds fear in independent developers. They fear betting on an app and losing their entire business. App store channels are one of the main issues facing these developers. If you don’t get your app on one of the top 25 lists, it faces falling into the no-discovery-depths of the app store. The frustrating part? Some of the apps that make it into the top 25 lists pay their way in with various marketing strategies as opposed to organic growth. Pincus is calling upon platforms such as Apple and Google to serve the consumer and promote apps that grow naturally.

This type of manipulation of the app store is scary to larger scale companies as well. These bigger guys want to make sure they can be profitable while distributing their resources to the many different app ecosystems. Zynga looks at this type of success as the “90/10″ philosophy. That is, the company will begin to put a lot of resources on a game when it sustains 10 million daily active users in a 90-day period. Zynga is obviously putting a lot of those resources into mobile after its $200 million acquisition of Draw Something, but there’s still some hesitation.

It’s a song we’ve heard over and over again, but developers are calling out for an opening of the industry. The lines of communication need to be broader, collaboration deeper. Pincus suggests we start by concentrating more on the content of our apps, as opposed to the platform. Pincus’ idea is “north star is social,” saying that the company is built on user retention and that retention is built on social. Nowhere in there does he mention platform.

“We want to isolate this to be more about great design, great mechanics, and great marketing,” Pincus said. “Less about if you picked Adobe Air, or HTML5, or native code, of Facebook, or Apple.”

If you’re tired of the endless iOS versus Android market share reports, take heart: There are new issues, and new challengers, making 2012’s mobile landscape more complex and more important than ever before.

Windows 8 is emerging as a viable threat to the iPad, while Android tablets continue to struggle. Google and Facebook are continuing to square off for domination of social interactions on your phone. And several mobile payments services, including Google Wallet, Isis, and PayPal’s offerings, are hoping to replace your credit card. More than ever, platforms are fighting to get and maintain a share of what you carry with you every day.

Meanwhile, the years-long iPhone versus Android battle has reached a bit of a standstill. Android continues to dominate in terms of overall smartphones sold (though Apple had a particularly great fiscal first quarter), and Apple remains triumphant in terms of actually making money from its devices.

We’re going to be discussing all of the above, and more, at our second Mobile Summit next month in Sausalito, California. If you haven’t yet scored one of the 180 invitations to this exclusive event, here’s a glimpse of what we’re expecting for the next year in mobile platform wars.

Tablet wars: Episode 3

We’re now three years into the post-iPad tablet generation, and it seems like the competition is finally beginning to get interesting. After suffering through mostly lackluster Android tablets over the last few years, Microsoft has emerged as a surprisingly refreshing tablet competitor with Windows 8. (Check out our in-depth preview with an early Windows 8 tablet.)

As I’ve written before, Microsoft is taking its approach to tablets a step beyond Apple with Windows 8, something that the company made abundantly clear during its unveiling for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview in Barcelona. Unlike Android or iOS, Windows 8 is a full-fledged desktop operating system, not just a souped-up mobile OS on a bigger screen. Microsoft is positioning Windows 8 as its OS approach for all computers in the next decade, not just tablets.

Indeed, Microsoft can show Android tablets a thing or two. Google has said that it’s going to be focusing even more on tablets this year, but I think the bigger problem for the search giant is its fundamental misunderstanding of tablets. They’re not just bigger mobile devices, as Android tablets initially were. Instead, tablets are more akin to PCs, thanks to their bigger screens and support for peripherals like keyboards.

The confusingly named new iPad will likely continue to dominate the tablet market (and the now-cheaper iPad 2 won’t do Android tablets any favors either). But Microsoft has a good shot at snagging the second-place spot this year — if it can keep Windows 8 tablets cheap and keep computer makers from ruining its shiny new OS with bloatware.

Google, meanwhile, is still trying to coax consumers into Google+, but it will likely have less trouble making a buck from them. I expect to see sponsored posts from Google+ as well, but knowing Google’s ad mastery, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had some surprises up its sleeves.

There’s no doubt that mobile is the next big goal for social networking dominance. You can look to the rise of other mobile-only social networks, like Instagram and Foursquare, as one major indicator. And unless you’re Google, you’d be crazy to take on Facebook head-on when it comes to launching a mainstream social network (LinkedIn and Twitter have been successful by focusing on things completely different from Facebook).

Last year, Facebook launched its innovative Timeline feature, and Google officially launched Google+. With the initial ground laying already done on the desktop side, expect both social networks to spend more time and energy perfecting their mobile experience.

Battle for your mobile wallet

After years of hype, we’ll finally begin to see mobile payments become a reality in 2012. PayPal is expanding its payments program to all Home Depot stores, and it’s gearing up to show off its long-awaited mobile wallet app at South-by-Southwest in a few days. Google Wallet will make its way to even more Android phones, and the carrier-backed Isis will continue to piece together its mobile payments platform.

2012 will also mark the first time most consumers get their hands on mobile payments offerings. Many have dabbled in mobile payments with Starbucks’ uber popular mobile app, but that’s a relatively simple solution. It’ll be interested to see if complete mobile wallets — which will not only handle payments, but also keep track of your purchases, loyalty cards, and wrangle special offers — actually take off with mainstream consumers.

Since we’re at such a nascent stage, any mobile payment success helps to legitimize the field, according to Isis CEO Michael Abbott. In an interview with VentureBeat at the Mobile World Congress, Abbott said he didn’t think the mobile wallet war actually existed, since all mobile payments solutions are fighting against payment options consumers are already used to.

]]>0The new mobile platform wars: It’s time to look beyond iOS vs. AndroidGoogle’s Andy Rubin: Nothing has changed with Android’s opennesshttp://venturebeat.com/2011/04/07/andy-rubin-android-openness/
http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/07/andy-rubin-android-openness/#commentsThu, 07 Apr 2011 14:56:25 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=253111He’s about a week late, but Google’s Android head Andy Rubin has finally responded in a blog post to claims that the platform is becoming less open now that Google is reportedly exerting more control over how manufacturers use Android and is delaying the availability of Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” to smaller developers. Rubin’s defense of […]
]]>He’s about a week late, but Google’s Android head Andy Rubin has finally responded in a blog post to claims that the platform is becoming less open now that Google is reportedly exerting more control over how manufacturers use Android and is delaying the availability of Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” to smaller developers.

Rubin’s defense of Android’s open source status is to be expected, since it’s one of Android’s biggest advantages over Apple’s closed iOS platform.

Rubin stresses that Google is operating the same way it always has with Android: It remains committed to releasing the platform’s source code when it’s ready, and he says that Google is following the “anti-fragmentation” program that has been put in place since the very first version of Android.

“We don’t believe in a ‘one size fits all’ solution,” he wrote, referring to the massive number of device types and form factors that Android now supports. He also denied that Google is working to standardize on a single Android chipset (rumors pointed to Google working with ARM).

Rubin goes on to say that the Android team is still working to bring Honeycomb’s features to phones and that its code will be released to the community once that happens. “This temporary delay does not represent a change in strategy. We remain firmly committed to providing Android as an open source platform across many device types,” he said.

Still, Rubin didn’t respond to earlier claims that Google is prioritizing certain manufacturers (in this case Motorola and other Android 3.0 tablet makers) over others. That’s likely been happening for some time, especially since Google has been tapping different manufacturers for its flagship Nexus One (HTC) and Nexus S (Samsung) phones.

Calling all mobile executives: This April 25-26, VentureBeat is hosting its inaugural VentureBeat Mobile Summit, where we’ll debate the five key business and policy challenges facing the mobile industry today. Participants will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. The invitation-only event, located at the scenic and relaxing Cavallo Point Resort in Sausalito, Calif., is limited to 180 mobile executives, investors and policymakers. We’ve pretty much finalized the invite list, but have a few spots left. Request an invitation.

The controversy was sparked by Twitter’s purchase of Atebits, the company that created a mobile version of Twitter called Tweetie, with Tweetie becoming the first official Twitter mobile app. Developers who had built their own mobile Twitter apps were concerned, and so were other developers who wondered if they might end up competing with Twitter, too.

Andreessen (pictured above) argued that developers are looking at things backward. They need to swing for the fences, aiming to build companies that will succeed even if Twitter builds something that competes with one of their products. The problem isn’t the fact that Twitter might compete with them, but rather that they’re not ambitious enough — at best, they’re building individual products rather than real companies, and in most cases they’re not even building real products, just features.

“That just doesn’t work regardless of what the platform vendor does,” Andreessen said. “At least not for a venture-backed company.”

The other speakers on Andreessen’s panel at f8, the Facebook developer conference, didn’t agree. Yelp chief executive chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman said you have to start out small and dependent on someone, then grow. And Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus (pictured right) said the problem may be intrinsic to Twitter, not the developers. Zynga is making lots of money from its Facebook games, but no one has repeated this success on Twitter, he said.

“I just don’t see the Twitter platform achieving scale for anyone but Twitter yet,” Pincus said. He added that the same seems to be true for Apple’s iPhone (a remark that mobile gaming companies like Ngmoco might dispute).

As for Facebook, Pincus said the social network has no obligation to protect Zynga by staying out of gaming. Instead, Facebook is building its platform out of self-interest — by opening the site and its social data to developers, Facebook sees that it can bring more innovative services to users.

“Facebook is on a mission, which is to provide the best social networking experience, and now even more broadly enable this social experience everywhere,” he said. “They’re not on a mission to make Zynga successful, or social gaming successful, or even developers successful.”

Facebook and Zynga have different goals, he added. While Pincus probably doesn’t want to compete with Facebook, if that happened, he said Zynga would compete by “going deeper into our own experience.”

]]>0Web pioneer Marc Andreessen: Twitter developers think too smallHow Twitter won the platform gamblehttp://venturebeat.com/2010/04/12/twitter-platform-developers-casin/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/12/twitter-platform-developers-casin/#commentsMon, 12 Apr 2010 22:08:30 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=175262Just as Captain Renault was “shocked, shocked” to find out that gambling was going on in Casablanca, I’m shocked, shocked to learn that Twitter is planning to take business away from its third-party developers. The Twitter platform was always about enriching Twitter and its investors. Why else bother? So much, as Twitter CEO Evan Williams […]
]]>Just as Captain Renault was “shocked, shocked” to find out that gambling was going on in Casablanca, I’m shocked, shocked to learn that Twitter is planning to take business away from its third-party developers. The Twitter platform was always about enriching Twitter and its investors. Why else bother?

So much, as Twitter CEO Evan Williams said of his company, for being a “force for good.” Last week, Twitter investor Fred Wilson speculated that Twitter would edge out third-party developers whose add-ons for the microblogging service merely filled feature holes that the company ought to have built itself. Then Twitter, which previously hadn’t developed its own mobile apps, bought Tweetie, a popular Twitter service for the iPhone, and released its own BlackBerry app.

I’m shocked, shocked that all of these announcements came right before Twitter’s big developer conference, Chirp, which opens in San Francisco Wednesday. Why? Pour encourager les autres, as Voltaire, another perennial optimist, said.

This is how building a platform for developers is much like running a casino. Some people may make money along the way, through luck or by accident. But the house always wins. And if you’re too successful, you get your chips cashed and you get walked out of the building.

People love to talk about the importance of being “open” — a key characteristic of a modern platform. Open, that is, to other people doing the work, like Tom Sawyer and his fence.

The real reason to build a platform is to boost your company’s valuation. An open application programming interface lets third-party developers donate their labor and ideas to the cause of enriching your investors. And through their creativity, investors get inspired about the potential to make money.

Want an example of this? Look no further than Facebook, which launched its developer platform in the summer of 2007 and was promptly hailed as the next big thing in computing. A few months later, Microsoft was hornswoggled into investing $240 million at a $15 billion valuation, which was far ahead of the company’s worth at the time. Microsoft, which has made so much money running its own platform for developers, would never have invested in a mere social network. But a next-generation computing platform? Sign them up!

True, some startups did make money in Facebook’s casino, like Slide and Zynga. But Facebook has done everything it can to take away the viral features that made those companies successful. Zynga’s $5 billion valuation, grown on the back of Facebook? Someone must have been counting cards. This way to the exit, gentlemen!

Twitter, by contrast, has done better in limiting its gamblers’ earnings. Come to think of it, has anyone built a large, meaningful business on Twitter? Plenty of Twitter developers have generated lots of noise and attention, and garnered some investment — often from the same venture capitalists who backed Twitter. But the best scenario they can hope for is a buyout by Twitter itself, as happened with Summize, a search engine, and Tweetie, the maker of a Twitter iPhone app.

That’s sort of like going from a high roller to a blackjack dealer. It’s hardly how entrepreneurs like to view themselves. But if you walk into a casino, you should be prepared to be taken.

Maybe next time, you’ll figure out that the real way to make money is to build your own.